Its a new audioengine to wrap up all the different media types for mixing, samplerate conversion, format conversion, encoding, upmix, downmix, etc...

And yes, DRC is on the tables very early days still, only ALSA works and paplayer is missing alot, but its getting there rather fast. Dont expect ANYTHING to work however, its VERY experimental at this point.

I AM NOT ACCEPTING ANY FEATURE REQUESTS - this is mainly a code clean-up at this point and removal of SDL_Mixer for gui sounds.

Just thought I would post an update to the progress while I am waiting for a build...

So far, SDL has been stripped out of XBMC, a new audio layer called, yes, you guessed it, "AudioEngine" has been built. This new layer is able to handle bit-perfect reproduction of audio, mixing, preloaded sounds, resampling, downmixing, post-processing filters.

PAPlayer's stream handing code, cross fade, and gapless mess has been re-written to take advantage of AE. PAPlayer does not re-sample anymore either as AE handles re-sampling, format conversion, channel remapping, down-mixing, making the code in the PAPlayer and dvdplayer MUCH simpler and robust.

Whats still left to do before a release:
* Make paplayer output the codec's native format, currently it converts everything to float
* Make passthrough work again
* Fix paplayer's seek
* Make the other AudioRenderers work (they will probably be re-written somewhat)
* add channel mapping support to paplayer for FLAC files (this one will make lots of people happy)

Obviously NONE of this will make it into Dharma, so don't even ask for it it is way too experimental and un-tested to release just yet.

I know there has been a-lot of stalled "new audio layer" attempts in the past, this time though we are 90% through having everything working where we can move onto new features such as up-mixing, ladspa plugins, etc. There may even be a addon interface for custom post-proc filters at some stage

One question just came into my mind for which problem i could not find a theoretical solution:

How can cross-fade handle bit perfect playback in case two sound has to be mixed with different sampling-rate. I think either one stream has to be resampled or both has to be upsampled to a higher bitrate.

Of course this is a bit theoretical because i think most CD material is on 44.1khz/16bit, but there are some 48khz mp3 files out there.

Thanks really much for working on such hard and complex code and yes you are making a lot of people happy with this engine.

I have managed to remove most of the unnecessary conversions between bit-depth formats now, this means a less load on the CPU since we are working in float everywhere now. In some cases the conversion could have been as as bad as float->s16->float->s16->float->s16 for the audio, and then another float->s16->float if you add visualizations to the equation.

The worst case now is, X->float, and float->s16 for some visualizations, most though work in float too, so we are down to one conversion in most cases provided your sound card supports float output. If the audio codec returns float data, we are down to 0 conversions, which is really nice IMHO.

and if someone is kind enough to donate the hardware, true-hd, etc... (i only have spdif hardware).

At this rate it AE should be ready to merge into trunk fairly soon depending on my available time. In the meantime, the adventurous can give it a go, just be sure to configure with --disable-pulse as only ALSA works atm.

garyi, I am not sure what you are asking for as I am unfamiliar with the mac system, but if you are referring to outputting at the sample rate the system expects, yes, AE is able to handle that.

alanwww1, I have sent you a PM, but to be clear to everyone...

If you have faulty (and yes, I mean faulty) HDMI equipment, such as a smashed HDMI capable TV that still turns on, or an amplifier that powers up but produces no sound as it is burnt out, etc... that would be enough, I can hack it to work with it, as long as your willing to donate it to me for the greater good.

I am not looking for a free ride, but I can not afford the equipment either, so if people want it, and can't develop it themselves, id be happy to do it if I can procure the equipment. My aim is to get XBMC's audio up to scratch so people have more reasons to use XBMC over other media centers.

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Kodi is a free and open source media player application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium.

Kodi is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.